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Education contributes to knowledge and personal skills that are essential for HIV prevention. In countries with a generalized HIV epidemic, the education sector also contributes to mitigating the impact of AIDS on students, education personnel, their families and communities. Monitoring and evaluating the role of education in the response to the HIV epidemic is important for countries to improve the quality of their policies and school-based programmes.
However, the education sector’s ability to collect data effectively and use evidence to improve its interventions varies across countries. One of the reasons was the lack of clear understanding and harmonized definition of indicators. To address this problem, UNESCO is working with several governments, agencies and the UNAIDS Inter-Agency Task Team (IATI) on Education have developed a limited number of 15 internationally recognized indicators that can be used to measure the education sector response to HIV and AIDS. It is hoped that these will provide a common approach to Education’s monitoring and evaluation of its HIV policies and programmes.
The indicators have been developed through an extensive review of existing indicators, international consultation and field testing by several ministries of education across the globe. Detailed information about the indicators, and the process for their development, field test and validation, can be found from the UNESCO publication Measuring Education Sector Response to HIV and AIDS: Guidelines for the construction and use of core indicators(referred as “the Global Guidelines” hereafter).
The Global Guidelines also provides detailed information about reasons for using each of the indicators; methods for collecting the data and measuring it; and guidance for interpreting the data, including how to analyse data from various indicators and draw conclusions in terms of potential changes in policies and programmes in the education sector.
Of the 15 core indicators recommended by the Global Guidelines, 8 indicators (Indictors 1-8) are recommended for all countries to use for monitoring and evaluation of the education sector response to HIV and AIDS; and 7 indicators (Indicators 9-15) are recommended for countries with a generalized HIV epidemic.
Endorsed by the UNAIDS IATT on Education in February 2013, the indicators are recommended for use by countries in various regions, in particular for the integration within Education Management Information Systems (EMIS). The EMIS is traditionally the main (or unique) sustainable source of data on education and then constitutes the most appropriate and sustainable source for collecting data on education sector responses to HIV & AIDS.
The indicators were pilot tested in Eastern and Southern Africa. Countries involved in the pilot were committed to incorporating some of them in their EMIS from 2014, and significant progress has already been advanced in some countries such as Tanzania and Zambia. Experience also shows that not all countries which have agreed to use the indicators have had the same success and that technical support are key to meeting the challenges in connection to inclusion into EMIS.
It was for the above reasons that UNESCO Ghana approached the team at the Education Management Information System (EMIS) to collaborate with the view to ensuring that those HIV and AIDS indicators are integrated into the EMIS system primarily to be able to measure the education sector response to HIV and AIDS issues in the schools most especially at the pre-tertiary level. Unfortunately, at the time the interested party (UNESCO/HIV & AIDS) had committed themselves to the said collaboration, the 2019/2020 Annual Schools Census (ASC) of EMIS had already been rolled out with the set of questionnaires already printed and delivered to the Ministry of Education. Thus, there was the urgent need to print a one-pager questionnaire as an addendum to the main ASC questionnaires to be administered in the schools.
The Ghana Education Service EMIS headquarters constituted a working team with the Coordinator of the HIV & AIDS secretariat to design an appropriate set of questions that will vividly capture and aid the calculation of the desired indicators. 34,000 copies of a one-page questionnaire were to collect relevant HIV data during the 2020 Annual Schools Census.
Along the data collection process, with UNESCO support, the EMIS team synchronized the new set of questions with the already existing one’s better data navigation and capture. The questionnaires were successfully administered in 260 districts amongst heads of schools, teachers’ districts and sub-district school managers amongst others. This was done by clustering the country into five zones.
Zone 1. Eastern, Greater Accra, Volta
Zone 2. Ashanti, Ahafo, Bono/Bono East
Zone 3. Central, Western, Western North
Zone 4. North-East, Upper East, Upper West
Zone 5. Oti, Savanna, Northern
This has been a success and can be attributed to the inclusion of three HIV and reproductive health indicators into the EMIS data platform of Ghana.
UNESCO and its partners will continue to provide technical support to the various stakeholders and agencies to achieve their vision and strategic plans.
Contact person Yaa Serwaa Assan Ninson Associate National Project Officer ys.assan-ninson@unesco.org
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